BaySand offers FPGA Flexibility + SoC Performance

One of the things I love about the electronics industry is that there's always something new and exciting to play with ("Ooh, Shiny!"). For example, I was just chatting with the folks at BaySand (www.baysand.com), who were regaling me with tales of derring-do with regard to their Metal-Configurable Standard Cell (MCSC) technology.

The guys and gals at BaySand say that their TeneX product family provides unique and compelling value propositions for FPGA high volume production, offers significantly added benefits over standard-cell based ASICs and SoCs, and delivers a customer-configurable platform that provides time-to-volume and time-to-market advantages over existing ASSP solutions.

TeneX-AS devices are said to offer a 10X NRE reduction over any volume standard cell ASIC or SoC product, while TeneX-AP chips are said to offer 10X TTM and reusability advantages over custom ASSP platforms. Of particular interest to users of Altera and Xilinx FPGAs are the TeneX-FA and TeneX-FX devices, respectively. As illustrated in the diagrams below, the folk at BaySand say that their MCSC technology offers seamless migration, pin/package compatibility, 1:1 device mapping, and a 10X unit cost reduction.

Altera FPGA migration to TexeX-FA devices.

Xilinx FPGA migration to TexeX-FX devices.

But how good is this technology really? Well, the folks at Toshiba would appear to have given it a "big thumbs up"! In September 2012, BaySand announced an agreement to grant an exclusive license to Toshiba with respect to BaySand's MCSC technology. Under this exclusive license agreement, Toshiba now holds a license to Design, Manufacture, Market, and Distribute BaySand’s innovative MCSC Products (Click Here to see this announcement).

Now, Toshiba is a world leader of advanced electronics and semiconductor device manufacturing; if their techno-weenies think a technology is good, this certainly makes me sit up and pay attention, so I, for one, will be keeping a watchful eye open to see what happens next…
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